Randy Kohan

Hive is Randy Kohan’s third collection of lyric poetry with Ekstasis Editions. His previous works are Rain of Naughts (2015) and Hammers & Bells (2013). Two of his poems, “Trains” and “Northern Monks,” can be viewed as poetry videos on YouTube. He lives in Edmonton with his wife and their two sons.

Stone and feather

Caught, then held in the rounding
wake of this Great Constancy,
a persistent communion
leans on the back of my vision.

What path are you clearing?
What sights shall I see?
And why does certain phenomena
shudder the walls of the chest?

*

A white dove appears
on the road
travelling in my direction.

O, my, look,
another and a third
cloaked in darker feathers.

There’s a measure of madness
in all that we do, held in a cold
stone of boldness, stone of measured calm.

The following day
the white dove returned
shedding a feather to earth.

I picked it up
and brushed the softness
white across my lips.

Dream

You’re a musician, right? she said
smiling, older, wiser than I.
We were sitting at the foot of a rise
a ridge and valley below.

No, I said in reply.
A writer, then! she said.
We’ll write a play for the Queen.

Next thing I knew I was reviewing
pastries, treats and drinks
at a small University food stand
deciding what to buy

for when my father came…

And then we were sitting
together on the ground
my young son, you and I
playing some game with cookies like cards.

You were youthful
your hair was black and straight
stylishly cut…
perhaps, I thought, you’re French?

And I said to myself, yes
yes, she’s the one.

You came in a dream
a youthful
Queen of joie de vivre

and with a young boy near us
to you I answered yes.


A natural inclination

Perhaps the manner exhibited
by those who’ve lost
is the grace I admire most.

There are beings at either
end of the threads of life
keeping them supple, taut.

Its said that Clotho
with her sisters
hold the precious flax.

I feel it
trembling, now and again,
how Dante loved Beatrice

how a winter
mist loves open fields
how birds are drawn to branches

how rain and leaves
are called to earth
how light is moved to travel

how distances reach
out to be near
how the hum of love
pulls at loss
buried in the chest

and how these verses burst
forth like grey-rain clouds
calling down
to rain already fallen

come back…

From Hive
by Randy Kohan
© 2017 Randy Kohan
Published by Ekstasis Editions